So as another year of hope drops into the end of the first quarter with ne’er a Doomsday or alien encounter in sight to raise society to the ground the month long hangover of an overspent Christmas we have universally endured throughout January now comes back like a kick in the fork, as the wage of February we were so desperately making-do until disappears into the chasm of unpaid bills we had hoped had disappeared with the tree and nana’s Christmas jumper.
With the full weight of taking the world’s minds off the current economic crisis affecting those countries who aren’t featured on the ‘Give us ya cash’ charity ads it seems the internet is once more bought forth as the champion of all things fleeting yet ensnaring, beguiling yet ultimately baseless time wasters of self indulgent pleasure.
Gangnam Style, that bespoke understated championing of the desires Koreans south of the boarder have to be jockeys in a derby set to a Swedish acid-house soundtrack, has succeeded where the USA failed by blowing up something foreign looking and Korean flavoured across more continents and countries than God has spare Mechano bits to make.
The South Korean singstar of the song, Psy, turned heads and stomachs in equal measure with his Gangnam Style hit, the silent ‘s’adding yet more dept and mystery to this magica-mans melody and muse.
And amusing it is, up to a point; much like the fabled females and cup contingent that went viral a while back what becomes picked up and carried onto the desktops of millions of users across the globe seems as arbitrary as which side of the bowl your fecal matter meets first.
With a record breaking 1.many-numbers-and-then-some billion views on You Tube the video has officially had more hits than four floors of Woman’s Refuge in Texas, even the almighty midget Bieber failing to turn new haircuts into hit singles. Released in July 2012 there was nothing to presume this unassuming upload would be anything more than a single voice crying out in the depths of murk and memes bobbing about the sidebar. The lead single from Psy’s sixth album, it says much of the cupidity of fame and the current way we view such, as most who have heard of the song – maybe even downloaded it and added pennies to the coffers of the Korean crooner – would be hard pushedto name another track off the album.
Come to that, what’s the name of the album it’s from?
That ever trusty bastion of the seekers of truth yet lazy of worth Wikipedia assures me it comes from PSY 6 (Six Rules), Part 1, an album so munificent and glorious in conception and style, in creation and delicate balance between Tiger Blood and Wynonna Ryder, so incredibly…
So yeah, I don’t have a fugging clue, either; but does that matter? Should I have to buy an entire album for the sake of the one song I actually wanted? If I like the member of a group my bezzie-mate belongs does it mean I have to also extend a hand of welcome to the scrofula riddled oaf beside my goodly chum’s chum, whom I know nothing of and have even less in common with?
As a child the idea of collecting a set of action figures was always fraught with the knowledge you would end up having at least one figure you neither wanted nor respected in the cannon, but was essential if you were to consider the lot ‘whole’.
Similarly, as an adult, the idea of obtaining every single Dreamcast game fills me with a tight giddiness of disturbingly pleasant emotion and glee, the option of being able to play every single game through to completion an admitted impossibility as a fully grown up grown-up.
But with music the desire is less so; I can afford to leave behind the ballad or ode to lost love in favour of keeping the track list up tempo and pace-heavy. I don’t feel like I have missed out by not having the complete album, as the individual costing of each single I choose still comes in way under the pricing bar of the full album itself- and as it exists purely in a digital form, paying for something I not only am never going to want to listen to but don’t even get the option of having made tangible so unseen eyes can watch as I run a thick heavy marker over the bit of the disc where the bumps that make up ‘Signing to some Slapper’ reside smacks wastage to my mind, and possibly quite OCD-ish indeed.
So shall it be Big Macc with all the trimmings but the dreaded unasked for gherkin, or the far healthier salad and soda that draws no sympathy from the hard-core and no concern from the hipster scene?
An entire playlist of singles and each of them a smash hit, an orgiastic smorgasbord of sounds and sensory sensations screaming out the speakers that could never have existed in the days of cassette tapes; not with their habit of unwinding in the mechanisms and most modern hit music sounding like a cassette tape unwinding as it plays a vaguely recognizable song….
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- Tape it or leave it: Considering the cassette release (chicagoreader.com)
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